Civilization Most Likely

The Milky Way is 13 BILLION years old. Some of our Galaxy’s oldest stars were born near the beginning of the Universe itself. During all these eons of time, we know at least one technological civilization has been born – US!

But if the Galaxy is so ancient, and we know it can create life, why haven’t we heard from anybody else? If another civilization was just 0.1% of the Galaxy’s age older than we are, they would be millions of years further along than us and presumably more advanced. If we are already on the cusp of sending life to other worlds, shouldn’t the Milky Way be teeming with alien ships and colonies by now?

Maybe. But it’s also possible that we’ve been looking in the wrong place. Recent computer simulations by Jason T. Wright et al suggest that the best place to look for ancient space-faring civilizations might be the core of the Galaxy, a relatively unexplored target in the search for extra terrestrial intelligence.

The Churn
Older mathematical models of space colonization have tried to determine the time required for a civilization to spread throughout the Milky Way. Given the size of the Milky Way, wide-scale galactic colonization could take longer than the age of the Galaxy itself. However, a unique feature of this new simulation is its accounting for the motion of the Galaxy’s stars.  

The Milky Way is not static, as assumed in prior models, rather it is a churning swirling mass. Colonization vessels or probes would be flying among stars that are themselves in motion. The new simulation reveals that stellar motion aids in colonization contributing a diffusing effect to the spread of a civilization.  TO READ ENTIRE ARTICLE, CLICK HERE...

Our Milky Way Galaxy

Photos from satellites and other sources are just one of the ways we learn about the universe around us. NASA’s Chandra X-Ray Observatory, for example, can create composite views of radio waves and X-ray waves, which is exactly what we see in this new image of the Milky Way. And wow, is it awesome.

The photo, originally released in May, shows a composite image of our galaxy’s core, and combined Chandra’s X-ray images with radio-wave data from South Africa’s MeerKAT Radio Telescope. NASA colorized the striking image so that all of the lightwaves are visible to the human eye. The brighter band at the center of the image is the Milky Way’s plane, which is a disk of matter where most of its stars are located.

The accompanying explainer video from NASA (above) states that the image “contains a wealth of scientific information” to explore. One of the most fascinating elements found within the image are threads—long, narrow bands of X-rays comprised of superheated gas and magnetic fields. One such thread runs perpendicular to our galaxy’s plane and looks to have X-ray and radio emission intertwined. It measures 20 light-years long but is only one-hundredth that size in width. Researchers think the threads were formed due to magnetic fields that collided with and twisted around each other.

NASA’s panoramic image uncovered several other amazing elements as well, like enormous plumes of hot gas that extend 700 light-years above and below the Milky Way’s plane. These plumes are believed to be heated by things like supernova explosions and hard-to-detect magnetic reconnections. There is also a supermassive black hole at the galaxy’s center, too, which also impacts movement and other elements.  TO READ MORE, CLICK HERE...

Dark Matter & Galaxy Spin

The Milky Way rotates at a whopping 130 miles (210 kilometers) per second, but a new study has found that dark matter has slowed the rotation of its bar by at least 24% since its formation nearly 14 billion years ago.

"Astrophysicists have long suspected that the spinning bar at the center of our galaxy is slowing down, but we have found the first evidence of this happening," study co-author Ralph Schoenrich, an astrophysicist at University College London, said in a statement.

These new findings not only shed light on the rotation of the Milky Way but also provide an insight into the nature of one of the most elusive materials in the universe — dark matter.

The Milky Way is a barred spiral galaxy with a thick band of stars in the center and large pivoting arms stretching out across the cosmos. Scientists think that a halo of dark matter surrounds the Milky Way, extending out far beyond its visible edge, as occurs at other galaxies.

In the new study, researchers used data from Gaia, a European Space Agency mission mapping the positions of billions of stars, to study the Hercules Stream, a thick cluster of stars that revolve around the Milky Way at the same rate that the galactic bar itself spins.

Because the stars in the Hercules Stream are gravitationally trapped by the pivoting bar, slowing down the bar's rotation would cause the stars to creep outward to keep their orbits in sync with the bar's spin.

The researchers found evidence of such an outward cosmic migration when they investigated the chemical makeup of the stars. The Hercules Stream stars are rich in heavier elements, suggesting that these stars formed closer to the galactic center, where stars are about 10 times richer in metals compared to those in the galactic suburbs.  TO READ MORE, CLICK HERE...

Our Milky Way Galaxy

The Milky Way as we know it today was shaped by a collision with a dwarf galaxy about 10 billion years ago. But most of the modern galaxy was already in place even at that early date, new research shows.

Ages of stars left behind by the galactic interloper are a bit younger or on par with stars in the Milky Way’s main disk, researchers report May 17 in Nature Astronomy. And that could mean that the Milky Way grew up faster than astronomers expected, says study author Ted Mackereth, an astrophysicist at the University of Toronto.

“The Milky Way had already built up a lot of itself before this big merger happened,” he says.

Our galaxy’s history is one of violent conquest. Like other giant spiral galaxies in the universe, the Milky Way probably built up its bulk by colliding and merging with smaller galaxies over time. Stars from the unfortunate devoured galaxies got mixed into the Milky Way like cream into coffee, making it difficult to figure out what the galaxies were like before they merged.

In 2018, astronomers realized that they could identify stars from the last major merger using detailed maps of several million stars from the European Space Agency’s Gaia spacecraft (SN: 5/9/18). Streams of stars orbit the galactic center at an angle to the main disk of stars. Those stars’ motions and chemistries suggest they once belonged to a separate galaxy that plunged into the Milky Way about 10 billion years ago (SN: 11/1/2018).

“Those stars are left there like fossil remnants of the galaxy,” Mackereth says.

Two groups discovered evidence of the ancient galaxy at around the same time. One called the galaxy Gaia-Enceladus; the other group called it the Sausage. The name that stuck was Gaia-Enceladus Sausage.  TO READ MORE, CLICK HERE...

Are We Alone? Part II: Making The Case

So, from Part I, we learned that we have Planets, Dwarf Planets, and Trans-Neptunian Objects all relative to the Sun with the understanding that our SUN is in the center of our Solar System.  We also learned that our Solar System was about 7.5 Billion miles wide and how long it would take to cross our Solar System with a latest technology space ship or a space ship traveling at light speed, which was 12 years or 4.15 hours, respectively.

NOW...  let's get into the good stuff...  shall we?

Our Solar System lives inside the Milky Way Galaxy...  and, our Milky Way Galaxy contains about 100 BILLION SOLAR SYSTEMS...  so, just a quick and dirty analysis of the time it would take to cross our Milky Way Galaxy would be 1200 BILLION years if traveling by latest technology spaceship or 400.14 BILLION hours if traveling on a space ship at light speed.

WOW...  one might be thinking...   our Milky Way Galaxy is pretty FRIGGING BIG...  but, let me really boggle your mind by saying that OUR OBSERVABLE UNIVERSE has an estimated 125 BILLION Galaxies floating around in it...

125 times the size of our Milky Way Galaxy is the size of our observable universe...

Did you catch the word OBSERVABLE?

So, what does that mean?

That means that what I just described is only that part of our universe that our latest technology telescopes can see, including the HUBBLE telescope that has been sent into OUTER SPACE to help us look farther away...

It is estimated that our OBSERVABLE UNIVERSE which is comprised of 125 BILLION galaxies is only FOUR PERCENT (4%) of our total universe...  That means, that NINETY SIX PERCENT of our universe, we simply cannot see.

4%   Observed

96%  Unobserved

100%  Total Universe

This means that our total universe has about 24 X 125 = 3,000 Billion more Galaxies than we can see.  And, to add to this mind blowing awareness, our damn universe is still expanding and more solar systems and galaxies are being created all the time.

Thinking about this makes the mind hurt...

Thinking about this has nothing to do with going to work and getting a paycheck...

Thinking about this has nothing to do with my retirement...

Thinking about this is a waste of time...

BUT...  not if you are curious...  and, not if you want to teach yourself something new...  and, not if you are wondering if there is other life in the universe...   and, not if you believe in ALIENS that have visited earth in our past and are continuing to do in our present...   and, not if you think that ALIENS were here before and altered our DNA...   and, not if you think that this part of science is fascinating.

Are We Alone? Part I: Laying the Foundation

 In 2006, the International Astronomical Union created the following definition of a planet...

IT WAS A CELESTIAL BODY THAT:   orbited the Sun

                                                                   nearly round in shape

                                                                   included all planets in its orbit

                                                                   is not a moon

As a result, Pluto was no longer considered a planet.  We now only have 8 planets which are (in order of distance from the SUN):

1. Mercury
2. Venus
3. Earth
4. Mars
5. Jupiter
6. Saturn
7. Uranus
8. Neptune

We have the following Dwarf Planets (in order of distance from SUN):

1. Ceres
2. Pluto
3. Haumea
4. Makemake
5. Eris

We also have Trans-Neptunian Objects:

1. Orcus
2. Quaoar
3. 2007010
4. Sedna

NOTE:  

1.  From one side of our Solar System to the other side of our Solar System is almost 7.5 BILLION miles and using the latest technology of space travel, it would take almost 12 years to cross our Solar System from one side to the other.  If you could travel at the SPEED OF LIGHT, it would only take a little over 4 hours which is less time than it would take me to drive from East TN to Myrtle Beach, SC.

2.  Our Solar System is located in the Milky Way Galaxy...